Digital marketing trends and techniques are shifting, and this is largely in response to the covid-19 pandemic and the impact it had on businesses, digitalizing the way they do their work, as well as consumers’ expectations, concerns, and shopping habits.

When comes to Inbound Marketing, it has been a dominant marketing methodology that has proven its worth and effectiveness in the last decade.

But like everything else, inbound marketing techniques and tools had to evolve into more interactive nature, in order to overcome the current marketing challenges and meet both businesses' and consumers’ expectations.

The inbound marketing funnels have evolved to flywheels. Above all, this made it more important now than ever for businesses to embrace inbound marketing so that they benefit from its optimized techniques and achieve their marketing and business goals in such challenging times.

But, let’s move now to “why is inbound marketing more important now than ever?”

Building Customer Loyalty

Inbound marketing can help you grow your business by building meaningful and lasting relationships with prospects and customers, turning them into loyal, happy, and satisfied customers.

In particular, inbound enables you to empower them to reach their goals at any stage in their journey with you. Specifically, by providing them with relevant, helpful, and relevant content that helps them reach their goals or solve their problems.

Nowadays, customers have higher online expectations. With everything shifting to the digital world; customers expect highly personalized, engaging, interactive, and relevant content and experiences from businesses. And this is where inbound marketing comes into place.

Remember, when customers find success, they share that success with others. This means attracting new prospects to your business and creating a self-sustaining loop, which is how your business can build momentum. And this is why the inbound methodology serves as a strong foundation for your flywheel.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Inbound Marketing

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in marketing is growing at a steady pace. It is not there to replace us but rather to assist us in the marketing process and business growth.

In inbound marketing, AI amplifies your understanding of the target audience through accurate and in-depth analysis. 

AI technology works by fusing machine learning and a simulation of human intelligence in order to learn from experiences and adjust.

It can help you predict your customer’s moves, elevate their user experience through personalized recommendations, and increase productivity through automation or mundane receptive tasks such as email sequencing and workflows. 

AI can play an essential role in inbound marketing by enabling you to provide more personalized website experiences and push notifications, enhanced PPC campaigns and targeting, and AI-powered content.

Furthermore, one of the most powerful AI tools is Chabot, which can boost your customer service efficiency and sales incredibly. 

In fact, a study conducted by HubSpot showed that 47% of shoppers will make AI-assisted purchases.

SEO-Based and Interactive Content

SEO-Based Content:

Inbound marketing enables you to create SEO-based content, which can help your target audience find your business in a non-interruptive way, attract them to your website, and maximize your reach through SEO optimization.

With inbound marketing, you can create meaningful conversations and valuable solution-based content. Keep in mind that this content can come in many shapes and sizes (blogs, social media, podcasts, press releases, etc…).

But, how can you create this type of content?! This can be accomplished by creating web-based content with specific keywords and phrases that are associated with your business, product, service, and industry. 

With a solution-based inbound marketing strategy, your content-driven SEO will position your business to organically appear in search engine results for the people searching for and in need of this information.

Interactive Content:

Interactive content encourages customers to actively engage with it rather than passively consume it.

It provides them with a richer customer journey, with different types of content, such as interactive infographics, calculators, videos, assessments, or white papers.

By adding interactivity to your content marketing mix, you are tapping into gamification. This will allow your customers to engage with content in a game-like process, which will help it stick in their minds longer, and make it 50% more shareable.

What does that mean for your business?
This means that your site will have a lower bounce rate, and you will be able to capture more data by providing an immersive experience that encourages lead data capture.
Inbound marketing strategies can establish yourself as a trusted consultant with whom customers can engage.

Moreover, the non-invasive nature of inbound marketing can help you lead with solution-based selling rather than product-based selling. It can help you present your content as a stream of valuable information and insight geared to offer solutions for a unique set of problems.

However, in accordance with this 2021 inbound marketing outlook, you will not want to over-stimulate your followers with frequent, aggressive, hard-sell posting, in the same way, you would not want to over-communicate with a lead or attracted party you’ve acquired through SEO-based content on your website.

Cost-Effective Form of Marketing

The global pandemic has taken a toll on the finances of all businesses and no company is entering 2021 unscathed. Therefore, cost-effective marketing is a top priority for all businesses.

Inbound marketing is comparatively less expensive than most other types of marketing. It has a wide repertoire of means to attract an audience without straining your budgets, such as content marketing, e-mail marketing, and social media marketing.

Moreover, inbound marketing strategies and campaigns can be tweaked without a significant setback in the budget.

Businesses can benefit from inbound marketing because it is profitable. In particular, it yields a high ROI (return on investment), has increased the scope and reach of the audience, and you can get a pulse on the effectiveness of your sales strategies through digital marketing metrics.

UX and Inbound Marketing

In today’s world, a high-end innovative user experience is a must. People are more particular now about the visuals and aesthetics of the offered products and services.

An optimized user experience (UX) can be utilized to make products and services delightful to use and fun to interact with.
Another reason behind the importance of inbound marketing for businesses in 2021 is that it can analyze the Core Web Vitals and suggest changes in the UX design wherever needed.

On the other hand, inbound content is optimized for UX, which makes it easier to interact with than regular text-based content. The response to the inbound content is longer and offers an enjoyable user experience for your leads.

A strong inbound marketing strategy will increase the speed of interaction with your customers, enhance personalization, and keep you ahead of the curve. Furthermore, it can increase opportunities for the coveted featured snippet spot on Google’s organic results (known as Position Zero).